Many businesses, such as pharmaceutical companies and consumer packaged goods companies, use campaign processes to deliver marketing offers to their customers. The campaign processes may include, for example, making telephone calls, mass mailings and/or sending a sales representative to visit the customer.
On the road, sales representatives can utilize detailing applications on tablet personal computers (PC) to help manage their face to face time with their customers. As the number of sales representatives reaches a saturation point, companies are seeking ways to maximize their returns on investments in sales force capabilities and influence buying behaviors more effectively. Businesses may attempt to purchase custom or packaged software such as sales force automation (SFA) tools to aid in improving the productivity, sales, marketing and clinical procedures of pharmaceutical and other life science companies. Oftentimes, businesses find it challenging to integrate data from externally purchased software with their own customer data. The extraction of data from multiple sources to drive analytical modeling can be a very laborious, time consuming process. Furthermore, each time a new form of data analysis need to be performed, a business must rewrite data extraction routines.
In the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, pharmaceutical companies face mounting challenges in the marketing and sales of their products. Over the past 12 years, the numbers of sales representatives has quadrupled while the value of sales visits to physicians has declined. Studies reveal that only one-third of sales visits to physicians were viewed as helpful. Current estimates indicate that more than twenty percent of physicians will not see sales representatives. When physicians do agree to see a representative, eighty-seven percent of those representative-physician interactions last less than two minutes. As an additional consideration, the pharmaceutical industry must confront the increased influence of managed care organizations and regulatory guidelines that mandate education over promotion.
Within pharmaceutical companies, the challenges span entire organizations. Brand teams typically lack deep insight into sales interactions, customer attitudes and beliefs, and can exert little influence. Without an organized way of delivering different messages to different physicians, these teams risk confusing or overwhelming the sales force. Additionally, brand and marketing teams lack the timely, accurate interaction data with which to effectively evaluate their marketing programs and materials. Members of the sales force are typically constrained by static printed materials, such as brochures and reprints, with which they must address different physicians' concerns. Marketing materials are updated and mailed infrequently; reducing the timeliness of sales materials. Amidst these obstacles, sales representatives struggle to capture the physician's attention and gain respect as trusted advisors.